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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25857967">His Rock</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talesmaniac89/pseuds/Talesmaniac89'>Talesmaniac89</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comforting Dean Winchester, Dean - Freeform, Dean spn, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, dean winchester flangst, dean winchester fluff and angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:48:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,961</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25857967</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talesmaniac89/pseuds/Talesmaniac89</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean finds comfort in the your arms after a hard day.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester/You</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>His Rock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Part of the TFW comfort stories: <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25896265">Sam's: His Home</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30802403">Castiel's: His Shelter</a>. These three are only connected by theme and can be read in any order.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dean was tired, not only physically, but mentally. You could see it easily in those green eyes whose light was a little duller than normal. Somehow you could always tell which days it was harder for the hunter to keep up appearances. </p><p>He called it your special little gift, you just called it love.</p><p>On days like that one you knew he needed to just be held, be loved, feel safe. Out there, in the real world, he had to stay the soldier, the hunter, the big brother. But in the room he shared with you, he was just a broken man. And he needed your help to pick up the pieces.</p><p>Dean was exhausted, and so you’d made up some lame excuse to return to your room earlier than normal to Sammy and pulled Dean along. Seeing the signs of exhaustion easily on his face the minute you shut the bedroom door behind him. His smile falling away and the armour he’d so carefully crafted through jokes and physical strength crashing to the floor the minute you were alone.</p><p>Moving to the bed you sat up with your back against the wall and stretched your arms out. An open invitation for him to hide in your embrace and just let go of all his worries for the night. </p><p>No words were spoken as he climbed onto the bed and into your arms. Staying low, he buried his head in the crook of your neck, arms around your waist as if you were the life raft keeping him afloat in stormy weather.</p><p>It’d been a hard couple of days, and a harder hunt, with lives lost on both the side of good and evil. And just like he did every time, Dean carried the burden of those deaths with him. Taking on all the blame and guilt in an effort to shield Sammy and you from the pain of heartache. Of course it was completely in vain, since you still felt the ache of loss just as heavily. But you loved him and his beautiful soul for trying to save you and protect his family in that way.</p><p>Sure, he had his demons and his imperfections, though you mainly failed to see them. To you they only enhanced his beauty, though you knew he’d hate it if he heard you call him beautiful. Because he was more than just a handsome face, more than just the body he time and time again used as a shield to protect his brother and you…</p><p>He was strength, intelligence and determination. He was everything, yet he somehow failed to see that. Dean wasn’t whole, no one in your business was, but he was strong. Strong enough to stay on his feet where most would have crumpled under the weight of their pain. He carried hurt, guilt and shadows on his shoulders and yet somehow light still surrounded him, came to life around him.</p><p>Dean had been broken, more than once, but that only enhanced who he was. Because through it all, he got back up and pulled those pieces close to himself. Every fractured dream, every shattered hope and every piece of his battered and broken heart. Though it clearly hurt, he gathered it all up and put it back together and he did so carefully, to not fracture the pieces further and cut himself on their sharpened edges. Gently putting himself together and shaping them into a part of who he was once more.</p><p>Not in a way that hid the seams, removed the evidence of past pain and concealed the break. No, with Dean it was more like mosaic glass; colourful, wonderful and new. Where others either stayed a blank piece of glass or left their shattered pieces on the floor, he made them into art. And they made him beautiful.</p><p>Softly resting your lips in the ghost of a kiss on top of his head you closed your eyes, just holding him close and being there for him as he fought his demons against your neck. The only sounds filling the room were the slightly heavy breaths of the older hunter’s internalised battle and your own whispered hum of Hey Jude by the Beatles. Your go to song to calm the love of your life’s nerves.</p><p>—</p><p>“You ok babe?” You whispered into the room once Dean’s breathing evened out and his arms let up some of the pressure around your waist. You hadn’t turned on the light when entering the room and in the darkness you could just about make out the man you loved as he moved his head down until his ear rested against your chest so he could listen to your heartbeat.</p><p>“Mhm… Better,” Dean’s voice was weak and broken as he answered you. Still tired, but maybe not as pained as it had seemed to you earlier when he tried to force the cheerful tone to stay strong in the bunker library. Throwing innuendos over his shoulder at his brother as you lead him by the hand to your room. More comfortable with making Sammy think he was a joker than a broken man.</p><p>“How about we talk about the picture perfect future hmm?” You asked, bringing up the normal little tradition that usually helped keep his thoughts from spiraling as you unwrapped one of the arms that had held him close to run your fingers through his hair. “Just… Talk about life after all this bullshit. That normally helps doesn’t it?” You added with a squeeze of your soldier’s shoulder when he stayed silent whilst listening to the beating of your heart like it was the most beautiful melody he knew.</p><p>“There’s not gonna be a happy ending for us. You know that right, (Y/N)?” Dean sighed, his words slightly muffled by your arms and t-shirt and making him sound younger. Like a scared, little boy that wanted you to reassure him that the monsters under his bed weren’t really there and that he was safe in your arms.</p><p>“Hey, nobody knows what tomorrow brings Dean, and even if it never comes true there’s no harm in playing pretend,” You said as your eyes focused out on the dark room around you, like a watchman making sure no one came too close to your comforting bubble. Keeping the monsters at bay. “But only if you want to Dean. If not we can just stay like this, until you fall asleep,”</p><p>Dean stayed silent and you didn’t push him. Picking up on humming the old classics again you let your fingers continue to comb through his short hair as you stayed silent. All you wanted was to help him, and if that meant letting him fall to pieces and pick those pieces back up in your arms then that was what you would do. You would be his rock, just like he had been there for Sammy and you time and time again. Letting the silence settle you stayed on Beatles as you hummed Blackbird into the darkened room.</p><p> —</p><p>“I think I’d like to restore old cars,” Dean’s voice was weak and careful as he finally spoke up. Sharing the fragile part of himself with you that still believed in something other than the endless hunt. Something more than the tireless fight that offered no happy endings.</p><p>“And we’d have a big yard,” You smiled into the dark room as your fingers continues combing through his hair. Your imagined future taking form in front of your eyes as you both entered the fantasy together, willingly leaving the real world behind for a little while.</p><p>“For the kids,” Dean’s words were lighter as he squeezed you a little tighter before moving a little and pulling you down from your seated position until you were both lying side by side. Your foreheads touching and your voices low, as if anything above a whisper would break the bubble around your imagined future and bring back the real world.</p><p>“Two kids, a girl and a boy,” You agreed as your hands found his in the darkness and his thumb painted circles on your wrist.</p><p>“Oh, I don’t think I could deal with a tiny version of you,” The small quiet chuckle that left him nothing like the usual forced laughter. This was quiet in its honesty where the other was loud to conceal the truth.</p><p>“You’d be the most overprotective, loving dad ever,” You said, placing a little peck on Dean’s lips as he smiled at you through the darkness of the room.</p><p>“And you’d bring the kids around to the shop so I could teach the little tykes to work on the cars, even if it made you nervous,” Dean added, adding to the picture perfect life painted behind your eyelids and in your heart.</p><p>“Sam would come around for dinner at least once a week,” You said, not keeping the other most important person in both of your lives out of the fantasy. He was just an integral part of your lives in reality as in your imagined future.</p><p>“The kids would love him, he’d be the best uncle ever,” Dean said truthfully, the pride he felt for his baby brother clear in every single syllable. “Even though he’d probably bring ‘em books instead of toys,”</p><p>“Any child of yours would be ridiculously smart Dean, he or she would love books,” You threw back at the hunter, knowing it was the truth, even though the hunter kept projecting the tough guy image that had kept him safe throughout the years.</p><p>“Then they’d grow up and go to college, and we’d grow old,” Dean’s voice was shaking slightly, as if your imagined kids were actually leaving the nest and going out on their own. Years of imagined memories and make-belief nostalgia painting his tone through the barely whispered words. Wrapping his arms around you the hunter once more buried his head in the crook of your neck and took a deep breath. “I’d bring you breakfast in bed and you’d make iced tea so that we could sit on our porch talkin’ about the glory days together,”</p><p>You could hear the smile in Dean’s voice, though muffled, and simultaneously you felt the dampness on your t-shirt. As the hunter both revered and mourned the future you most likely wouldn’t have. Holding him close by the back of his head you mourned along with him as you kept your own tears at bay.</p><p>“And we’d be happy and in love, just like now,” You whispered into his hair, your legs moving to intertwine with his above the covers. As if bringing him even closer would let the man feel your love, your joy of sharing your life with him, no matter what the future entailed.</p><p>“Yeah, that’s the one thing that’ll never change isn’t it?” Dean’s content sigh tickled your throat and softened your own features into a sad smile as you held each other in the bedroom of the Men of Letters bunker.</p><p>“Never,” You promised. </p><p>“Forever, no matter the future?” Dean asked, his voice starting to gain the lazy edge that hinted on a nightmare free night of sleep. The first pull into a dream world of picket fences and little mini Deans and (Y/N)s running around on a back patio with an endless supply of homemade iced tea, pies cooling on the windowsill, and a self built swing-set.</p><p>“Forever,” You promised, and you meant it, as you floated into the carefully crafted pastel dream together with your soldier. The man as strong as steel, yet as fragile as glass. The hunter who was your rock as often as you were his, and together… Together you were a mountain. Strong, and unmovable against the storm.</p><p>
  <em>Forever.</em>
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